You can use the terms "and" & "or" in your search; "or" phrases are resolved
first, then the "and" phrases. For example, searching for "black hole and
galaxy or universe" will find articles that have the phrase "black hole" in them
and also have either "galaxy" or "universe" in them. Please note that other
search syntax like quote marks, hyphens, etc. are not currently supported.

When you view web pages with matches to your search, the terms you searched for will be highlighted in yellow.

If you are aware of an interesting new academic paper (that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or has appeared on the arXiv), a conference talk (at an official professional scientific meeting), an external blog post (by a professional scientist) or a news item (in the mainstream news media), which you think might make an interesting topic for an FQXi blog post, then please contact us at forums@fqxi.org with a link to the original source and a sentence about why you think that the work is worthy of discussion. Please note that we receive many such suggestions and while we endeavour to respond to them, we may not be able to reply to all suggestions.

Please also note that we do not accept unsolicited posts and we cannot review, or open new threads for, unsolicited articles or papers. Requests to review or post such materials will not be answered. If you have your own novel physics theory or model, which you would like to post for further discussion among then FQXi community, then please add them directly to the "Alternative Models of Reality" thread, or to the "Alternative Models of Cosmology" thread. Thank you.

In Section 1 the three words comprising the question "Is Reality Digital or Analog" (D/A?) are defined further. In Section 2 Key aspects of physics are probed using (D/A?) and contradictions pointed out. The incompatibility of an analog Gravity and an analog-digital Quantum Mechanics are traced back to Einstein's point-photon and his flexible spacetime. Without a unified theory it is fruitless to decide about the basic makeup of the universe. Space and Time, Electromagnetic Radiation, Matter and Gravity, and Quantum Mechanics in general are examined with (D/A?). In Section 3 (D/A?) is answered within a new Beautiful Universe model ToE 'Theory of Everything' proposed from first principles. A universal lattice of identical spherically-symmetrical interacting dielectric nodes exchanging angular momentum through magnetic induction, in units of Planck's constant (h) is proposed. The 3 space dimensions and time, vacuum, matter, radiation, dark energy and dark matter are derived from the causal, local self-assembly and Hamiltonian evolution through interactions between neighboring nodes. Each node represents a miniature Bloch sphere, at a variable rate depending on node rates of rotation, and the orientation of their axis. The model explains matter as nested polyhedral patterns of nodes locked by tensegrity yet capable of soliton-like translation. Quantum effects are the result of the diffusion of momentum in a wave pattern through the lattice. Gravitational potential equals node rotation, but its force is due to the spring-like twisting geometry of the node axes in the regions of space between matter.

Author Bio

Vladimir F. Tamari studied physics and art at the American University of Beirut where he met and was inspired by Buckminster Fuller (around 1960). He invented and built 3D drawing instruments. In the 1980’s he joined the Optical Society of America to keep up with the field and holds U.S. patents for inventions based on his Streamline Diffraction Theory to cancel diffraction in telescopes. Beautiful Universe: Towards Reconstructing Physics From New First Principles (2005) is referred to here. He paints in watercolors and has designed Arabic fonts for Adobe. He has lived in Tokyo for the past 40 years.

It would indeed be quite ironic for me not to take into account these extrapolations.

I love indeed the spheres,it is the fundamental basis of my theory of Spherization.

But I slowed down to turn them into monologues. It is no longer necessary.

For your work, it is very interesting, that being said, I think the general point of view mixes some not-fundamental, and therefore, involve some confusions.

Indeed,here is some examples ,the Lie algebra, the extradimensions, the symmetry (misinterpreted, without limitation, any laws,...),the Dark energy The fundamentals are much more than speculations, subjectivities, unfounded.

But I like your work, be sure,I just like the rationalities simply.A string is divisible, a spher no.Your analogy with Boch sphere is relevant....the volumes!!! these volumes of the ultim fractal( from the main central sphere) are universal and specific.The rotations spinals and orbitals imply the difference.

Have you considered different volumes of spheres? for a concrete calculation of all mass and their polarities of evolution?The nodes shall be more rationalized at my humble opinion.

Dear Steve nice to know you too! Thank you for appreciating the Bloch sphere on the node in the illustration - I added it at the last minute. However the nodes themselves are the ones that define space, so they can have no volume, just angular momentum and symmetry. Kind regards Vladimir

BTW Can we please avoid short lines in the replies as the server displays them as double spaces, that needs scrolling down by the poor reader thanks.

Ephkharistou (thanks) Efthimios I will be happy to answer your questions. This explains a bit about the how the illustrations were made. In my research I have put down ideas using the limits of my knowledge and abilities - if the basic model has any merit it will need to be developed further by professional (and younger) researchers!

Vladimir

Russell Jurgensen wrote on Feb. 7, 2011 @ 21:22 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

I enjoyed your essay and diagrams. You clearly have a put a lot of thought and work into it. I would like to encourage you to keep working on it. Your analysis of other theories is hard hitting but I am mostly interested in your ideas. You have a valuable perspective. If you do develop it further (and I think you have the ability) it would be interesting to see equations for how two spheres transfer momentum. I have found this kind of formalism can help refine ideas. Overall I found your essay thought provoking!

Thanks Russell I appreciate your comments and encouragement. in my original and much fuller paper completed in 2005 Beautiful Universe on which my present fqxi paper is based, I have described the transfer of momentum between nodes more quantitatively in terms of the rotation rate and (h) and the direction the momentum is transferred to (the node-to-node geometry in the lattice). Another important factor is the rate of rotation of the node receiving the momentum which determines the speed of transfer of the energy. This creates the density or local potential of the lattice and variations in that create the 'curvature' due to gravity in BU. The nodes have spherical symmetry, but are themselves not 'matter' because matter (and everything else) is made up of them. All this needs a systematic mathematical description and simulation which I can barely do with my training and energy level at 68 and counting! Kind regards Vladimir.

Member Tommaso Bolognesi wrote on Feb. 8, 2011 @ 10:12 GMT

Hi Vladimir,

I sympathize with the idea that everything (including the vacuum, energy, matter, antimatter, radiation, dark energy and dark matter) should emerge from the interactions of simple units. We have very good examples of complex phenomena resembling particle trajectories or life-like patterns, emerging from interactions of elementary, binary cells arranged in 2-D (Conway) and even 1-D (Wolfram) arrays. Your Kepler packing of magnetic dipole spinning nodes reminds me of Fredkin's theories, e.g. his 3-D Reversible Universal Cellular Automaton model.

The hope of these approaches is to explain the highly complex in terms of the very simple, and I believe that the powerful notion of emergence (in computation) might indeed satisfy this need.

But what I find annoying in cellular automata models, as well as in yours is that you assume (if I understand correctly) an infinite, pre-existing, regular lattice, for the game to start. That's very costly a structure to set up in one shot. Wouldn't it be much cheaper to have the 'ether' structure be built progressively, starting from (almost) nothing? In my experiments with algorithmic causal sets, meant as instances of discrete spacetime, the structure is a directed, unlabeled graph that grows. Depending on the underlying algorithm, some regular, grid-like structure can develop, on top of which localized structures may start playing their interactions; both the 'background' and the actors are produced by the same mechanism.

Also, you attribute some state properties to your nodes, some labels, e.g. spin, in the same way as cellular automata assign a binary state (or ternary, in Fredkin's models) to the grid nodes. Let me just mention that, if one is concerned with (extreme) minimality, there is an alternative approach, that I explore in my essay here: one could try to use stateless, unlabeled nodes, and hope to see everything emerge from the dynamics of the graph growth. Ciao. Tommaso.

Thank you for your interesting remarks. I looked at your paper again and this time I was struck by the similarity of your simulation Fig. 4 lower right to a print illustrating a paper on vortices in the ether by ... Descartes! I had reproduced this illustration as Fig. 22 in my original 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. I definitely do not assign spin states to the nodes! In my model there is an infinite number of possible spin orientations (the nodes are spherically symmetrical and in some cases when the nodes are not rotating they are totally neutral and do not react with their neighbors! The Bloch sphere was just to show how a node may express any quantum state.

I envy you the training and means to simulate your ideas. That would be a very nice way to prove or disprove my and other minimal universal theories. Yes I based my model on a pre-existing crystal-like set of nodes which self-assembles because of induction forces as in Fig. 1 of my original paper. An 'organic' self-generating universe like you propose would be nice too, but my simplistic brain prefers a "nuts and bolts" approach. In the above paper I propose various experiments to prove or disprove the model, and if it is wrong, it is wrong. I also envy you your working in beautiful Pisa where Galileo must have walked and wondered. I will try to study your work more closely.

Ciao Vladimir

Member Tommaso Bolognesi replied on Feb. 9, 2011 @ 09:47 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

thank you for the pointer to the nice pictures by Descartes, which I had not seen before; in fact, the analogy with fig 4 in my essay is only superficial, since the former provides a 'static' snapshot of the vortices, while the latter is a whole spacetime, in which time progresses outwards. But it would be interesting to derive, at least in principle, the causal set for those cartesian vortices, and see how they would look like...

You are right, the exploration of these models based on the relatively simple interactions of a moltitude of small entities greatly benefits from some simulation, and luckily the software I am using supports such experiments without need of much programming effort (probably less than what you put in your beautiful graphics!).

As for the stateful (as opposed to stateless) nature of your nodes, I suppose what I meant is that even the fact that a node may or may not be rotating, as you write in your reply, corresponds to a node 'state'. A binary state. You may then consider angles of the rotation axis, in which case the state ranges in a continuous set.

Tommaso, thanks for your comments I have a feeling I responded to them but now I see I have not. Apologies. Yes of course Descartes' premises are very different from yours or mine but there are startling similarities - that everything including space (not just matter) is made of corpuscules. In my case the similarity is even more startling as he theorized that these corpuscles rotate.

I raise my proverbial hat to whoever made those beautiful etchings to illustrate his ideas - they had no computer graphic software as I benefited from or programmed graphics as in your case.

The node states in my theory have three aspects 1) a node may or may not rotate 2) the rate of rotation can have any positive value but the angular momentum is in units of (h) 3) a node rotates at any spherical angle 4)the chirality of node rotation (whether it is clockwise or counterclockwise) is of critical importance.

My own state in Tokyo after the recent earthquake is stable after a week with my mind in a whirl.

Member Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Feb. 9, 2011 @ 17:27 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

Thank you for your kind remarks on my essay.

I have not been able to understand from your essay how the Born probability rule emerges from your basic constructs. Maybe you could explain some more through posts here? Thanks.

For me the emergence of probability follows by noting that there are fundamental reasons why the Schrodinger equation is modified by nonlinear stochastic corrections during the measurement process.

Thank you for your interest in my ideas - contained in a remark to your very interesting essay here in fqxi.

My idea about the origins of Born probability rely on a set of assumptions explained at length in my original 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. There was no space to explain things in detail in the fqxi paper kindly access the pdf of my earlier research through the underlined link above thanks.

Figures pertaining to probability in my theory (section 2.7) are also attached herein as well. The idea is that the Schrodinger equation describes an actual wave of energy sweeping over a set of "particles" which are the universal nodes of which my model is made. It is like a picture moving on an LED monitor screen - the light in a given LED diode changes with time, but the LED itself stays in place. There is no wave-particle duality in my theory. In the 2D case energy in the form of angular momentum from one node is transferred to two adjoining nodes, and each of them to two others so that across the field of nodes the energy distribution has the form of a normal distribution, the bell curve of the probability function. In an actual 3D lattice each node gives its energy to 9 others. It is a diffusion process. These ideas will only make sense in the context of starting physics from scratch as outlined in my earlier paper.

Please forgive my rather simplistic ideas that emerged from my stochastic artist's brain - if Nature is more complicated than this I will be unable to understand it!

I am going to have to spend some time with your essay, but it is one with which it is worth spending some time. I have occasionally read that when you study quantum mechanics you are actually studying music. I have some reservations as to this as the currently held notions of music theory are really out in left field - way out. On the other hand, music is physics. It is its own particular physics with its own unique mathematics, which does not include tempered tuning.

Thank you for replying to my essay. When I decided to enter this contest, I did not know what to expect but I am finding out that it really is an exciting exchange of ideas.

I am wondering about that 1954 letter that Einstein wrote to Michelle Besso;

I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i, e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory [and of] the rest of modern physics.

Thanks for your very interesting note. Of course at the most basic level everything is related, and more specifically we may think of the physics - i.e. acoustics - of music and even of the musicality of some concepts in physics such as the vibrating strings of String theory. Herschel was a professional musician before turning to astronomy. Further back in time there is Newton's correlating colors with notes and Pythagorus' concepts of number, musical scale and the music of the spheres.

Your own work on Structural Resonance sounds most interesting and I hope to study more about it in detail when you publish the material. Resonance of course is the basis of the first electronic musical instrument invented by Léon Theremin .

Einstein was a gifted violinist (but that does not make him a string theorist). Your quoting his letter to Besso where he wonders if his physics would be meaningful if fields are not continuous is most relevant in the context of this contest. His core discovery in general relativity that gravity and acceleration are one would still be a key result in a digital universe, his protest to the contrary notwithstanding. I have tried to show in my in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based that GR would be greatly simplified in a digital universe, reduced to the 'optics' of refraction in a medium of variable density.

I was at the beach for the last couple of days. It was relaxing to get away. What if the "sphere" is a Buckyball that surrounds the Black Hole "near singularity", and "spinning" tetrahedra (Vladimir Tamari's basic idea - perhaps of red-green-blue-white "color"?) are situated at each of the 60 vertices (of the Carbon-60 Buckyball). This would yield 240 degrees-of-freedom similar to Garrett Lisi's E8 roots, but we would only have 3 dimensions at each of two different scales (the 3-D buckyball scale, and the 3-D tetrahedra scale). I've always liked Buckyballs, and one of the discoverers of Carbon-60, Sir Harry Kroto, lives im my neighborhood.

In case of a rotating Black Hole, the Buckyball symmetry may not be stable enough, and two nested Buckyballs may transform into their homotopic cousin, a lattice-like near-torus (similar to a lattice-like Tokamak) with spinning tetrahedra at each of 120 vertices. This would yield the 480 degrees-of-freedom of a Supersymmetric model similar to Lisi's.

Thank you Dr. Cosmic Ray nice to hear from you. I need to rest my eyes for a while after successful cataract surgery. Will answer your interesting points in a week or so. For a full description of my ideas (with buckyballs included) please read my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. Lisi's E8 far too complex than need be. A few years ago I emailed Dr. Kroto asking whether a buckyball constructed of dipole "rods" has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem (it says a vector field on a sphere always has a vortex) but no answer. More later.

Cheers Vladimir

Ray Munroe replied on Feb. 24, 2011 @ 16:07 GMT

Hi Vladimir,

You asked "whether a buckyball constructed of dipole "rods" has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem".

My guess is that IF the buckyball has a weak spot due to Brouwer's theorem, then this weak spot would be part of a hexagon. Clearly, the pentagons have the wrong symmetry for this type of instability, but if a Buckyball is orientated similarly to Figure 2 of The Nature of Dimensions, then it might have a weak spot (and this weak spot might be partially responsible for inducing a triality of generations). If a sphere collapses due to this instability, then the natural new shape would be toroidal. Two nested Buckyballs are homotopic to a torus, so I anticipate that this new toroidal "lattice" should have the equivalent of 120 Carbon sites (although this "lattice" is comprised of the very fabric of Spacetime near the Black Hole "singularity", and not actual Carbon atoms - the same concept as Subir Sachdev's graphene analogy [Reference 12 of the above linked paper] to the Holographic Principle). If we place a spinning tetrahedron at each of those 120 sites, then we may have as many as 480 degrees of freedom on the surface of our torus (plus the frame degrees of freedom), which may be related to an E8xE8*~SO(32) TOE of order 496.

I especially like the pentagon symmetries of the Buckyball (and my TOE), because these pentagon/pentagram symmetries lead to the possible application of the Golden Ratio, as experimentally determined by Coldea et al [Reference 6 of the above linked paper], and as pictorially represented by the appendix figure in my essay.

Thank you Ray for your response and wishes. If Brouwer's theorem (also called the hairy-ball theorem because you cannot comb a hairy ball without leaving a vortex) causes a weak joint to exit in polihedra, this may well be the cause of decay in subatomic particles.

I will have to re-read your essay and your answers soon. I think we both have the right faith that polyhedral arrangements are the key to the construction of matter. Just to clear one point- in my essays I show a figure of a tetrahedron with what appears like rotation vectors. Such a tetrahedron would be made up of two dipoles on opposite sides their vertices making up the shape. The rotation arrows are to show how such a configuration resulted from a homogeneous field of parallel dipoles involving slight twisting of all lattice points all over the universe (weak linkage but all lattice nodes are involved).

Indeed nested polyhedra are what would make up particles, whether they are C60 or others. This was the conviction of Buckminster Fuller and of Kenneth Snelson. I think these models should work in and of themselves, not grafted onto existing theories such as the Standard Model, GR , SR and QM (as Lisis's E8 does). I tried to show in a rudimentary and mostly qualitative fashion that such a reconstruction of physics is possible. I am having fun indeed!

Vladimir

Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 2, 2011 @ 18:18 GMT

Ray, you are going to laugh,It's the Toe fashion ahahahah no but frankly all people has a toe in fact,you are ok with me I am persuaded it's comic in fact.but it's well it's cool to see all that, a toe hihih the war of toes but of course only one is correct ...extradimensions hihih a toe , and the toe of the day is the the theory of polyhedrisation , tomorrow it will be the theory of really everything, and after the next day, the theory of truly everything. hihihi My spherization is 3D is so far but so far ....me and my rationalities ,I am so far.

But it's cool to see all these similarities, I am happy that people makes similarities of my spheres and spherization in 3D ...I repeat in 3D...Sill one in 3D....in fact many of these extrapolations are falses, but it's cool.

I enjoyed reading your essay. You raise many fascinating points about the fundamental nature of reality. Your node idea is very interesting. I like how you draw connections with cellular automata and qubits.

Thank you Paul. The idea that my spherically-symmetric node could be a qubit was not too clear to me in my in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe (BU) paper on which my present fqxi paper is based. With new understanding I superposed a Bloch Sphere onto a node in the figure in my present fqxi paper and somehow it all seems to clicks together- if so then in theory all of physics must somehow be reduced to the interactions between a local field of nodes. The (BU) theory needs a lot of work of course - I wish it can be simulated. I can imagine the interactions as linkage made up of 'slippery'spherical gears. Slippery because if they are directly linked like mechanical gears a small local motion must instantly activate all nodes in the universe. OK Steve you have your spheres physics in that form :)

Best wishes

Vladimir

Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 8, 2011 @ 18:19 GMT

:) it's interesting all that.they turn thus they are .....proportional furthermore with the volumes and their rotations....interesting these similarities , interesting.

EUREKA FROM BELGIUM HAHAHAH SPHERES AND THE SPHERE DEAR ALL IT IS THE REALITY.

Dear Tamari insert the volumes, they are proportionals as the velocities of rot. with mass ....now you must consider that an ultim entanglement possesses a specific finite serie of entangled spheres, where thje center is the biggest spherical volume(as our center of our universal sphere), now you must consider a precise number. In a BEC probably the space, the light, the mass are the same , thus it's these rotations which imply the rule.If now you insert two main senses of rotation , you shall difefrenciate the mass and the light easily.Considering the evolution, you can thus insert the fusion by volumes and the synchro and sortings also, thus the quantum number rests finite for this two stabilities, linear and gravitational.The space doesn't turn logically and the lattices evolve .....thus of course the volumes of the entangled spheers are essential. Let's take thus the mass ,the volume , the vel.of rot.spin. and finally the velocity of rotation orbital.we can take a generality for the equation, constant=mvV ...mv1v2V..for all physical spheres generalized by a sphere of whole.now you can correlate with the thermodynamic and the quantum number and the decrease of volumes, a little as our cosmological spheres, indeed a star is bigger than a planet....the logic is universal.The velocities of rotations are proportionals with mass if and only if dear tamari the volumes,spherical are considered with the biggest rationality, deterministic.The road towards our walls is logic with reals as numbers.

Ps I am persuaded that this number is the same than our cosmological real number of spheres! and the serie is relativistically speaking the same.The number is important even for the light and its encoding by informations of rotations and frequences.That implies that the number during the fusion mass light of evolution doesn't change, ...tus the increases of mass is relevant with the volumes and the density.A little as our cosmolgical spheres, the number is finite and they evolve by increase of mass due to this fusion of light.If we consider the lattices as our cosmological spheres, you shall see the no mass of the space due to the not rotation, and the no mass of light due to an other main sense than the gravitational stability, these the linearity is relevant differenciating the sense.If you insert in the equation of Einstein E=mc² the speed of rot. spinal and the speed of rot.orbital of the whole of the spherical ultim entanglement you shall have E=(c²o²s²)m....that give logically with a time operator correlated with rotating spheres the maximum energy in all things at all scales......in a pure 3D.

Thank you for your Eurika explanation. I do not understand everything you describe for example what do you mean by "the fusion of light"? Another problem is that your English and spelling is often unclear for example "If we consider the lattices as our cosmological spheres, you shall see the no mass of the space due to the not rotation, and the no mass of light due to an other main sense than the gravitational stability, these the linearity is relevant differenciating the sense." May I suggest you write your interesting sphere ideas in an article with illustrations and publish it somewhere as a reference? Good luck to you Steve. By the way my name Tamari is similar to the Japanese word for "temari" a beautiful craft tradition making balls of strings defining spherical geometry.

Best wishes from Vladimir

Anonymous replied on Mar. 11, 2011 @ 10:10 GMT

Hi Vladimir,

Thanks it's nice.In fact I said that the lattices between spheres are probably universally linked with the evolution, thus of course the space without rot.between cosmological spheres change and evolve on the arrow of time and its entropy.

For my publications, probably this year, at this momment I have some contacts in Belgium for the creation of the International Humanistic Sciences Center, I will create jobs thus of course I will be more professional.And of course I will publish many many pappers about my theory of Spherization a GUT TOE of Roating spinning spheres..........QUANTUM SPHERES.....COSMOLOGICAL SPHERES...UNIVERSAL SPHERE(unique of course this universe)the rotations and quantum number and their volumes with the finite number and it's ok.

For the fusion m/hv it's simple the mass polarises the light simply ...synchro sorting.........mass, volumes, vel.of rot.......thus you shall understan,d why the number must rest finite for a concrete increase of mass due to this evolution, coded intrinsically in the gravitational stability.The density and mass changes thus also their rotations and the volumes probably, the number doesn't change .....hope I am clearer.

Good luck also dear Vladimir, beautiful country the Japan, so creative this country and so skilling.

in a BEC light and space are the same , the gravity of course possesses a number finite for the entanglement but the add and multiplication is interesting and possible, see the work of Basudeba.I ask me one thing,the gravity has 1 the entanglement or a superimposing of entanglement , in fact it's difficult that ....the light and the space are the same, the gravity also but apparently due to evolution and biological or mineral complexification in 3D,this gravity has this number increased, or the other possibility is that the volumes of gravity increases....in all case it's a big unknown.The real combinations of spheres are so complexs but rest in 3D.

in fact if you see the light and its linearity and the mass and its gravitational stability....I see that as a male and a female , the light is for me the male and the mass the female in a simple point of vue....the fusion creates .....as a baby !

The Universe is thus an act of pure love and we evolve, thus of course we improve and we optimize.In logic the others spheres bigger as BH ...towards the center .....is in the same logic or rotations and polarizations.

Thank you for your posts. Your mind is obviously full of ideas. You have to write them systematically and check spelling etc. Love makes the Universe go round! That by itself is worth all the physics there is and will be! I just experienced the worst earthquake in Tokyo but family and friends OK thank God. The Earth may be an (oblated if that is the word) sphere but it is irregular and has these troubles on the surface!!

Be well and good luck with your IHSC project and physics papers. Vladimir

Ray Munroe replied on Mar. 11, 2011 @ 14:21 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

I'm glad to see that you, your family and friends are OK. My prayers go out to the people of Japan.

Dear Vladimir, Indeed the surface is chaotic due to some human parameters....that's why the spherization is a harmonization in time space evolution.....that helps for the decrease of sufferings.

Thanks for the IHSC Unified Sphere Institute.You know I have contacts in Belgium for the creation of this center.I will tell you the evolution, you know all are welcome for the complementarity for our fellowmen(alone we are nothing in fact).These persons say me that they are going to translate my ideas in numbers.Hope that will go,they seems humanistic and universal.Me and the economy it's the water and the fire.hihihi

Very nice! Our research shares a common approach. In relation to your eight distinct states of spin rotation, I think you might be interested in my result contained in this preprint, sidebar 1, figure S1.1 in which the closed, congruent (mod 12) Sophie Germain prime sequence shows correspondence between the least separated primes (11, 23) and (1559, 1583); (479, 491) and (7103, 7151). Reversing the polarities of these four points gives eight states.

Good luck in the essay contest. I hope you find time to read my entry.

After looking at your fqxi paper and the preprint I must admit to feeling really unqualified to comment on your work, but will read your paper again - your expertise in number theory and sundry other topic is beyond the range of what I have studied. Over the years I would concentrate on learning whatever happens to be the next item necessary for my research and have obviously lots of gaps in my self-education.

While sincerely admiring the range of your work, I have to disagree that we have a common approach insofar as the physics itself is concerned. I have not claimed to have eight states of spin rotation - the nodes are spherically symmetrical and can rotate at any solid angle, hence the Bloch sphere representation. An eight-fold symmetry can be obtained however if one considers just the 3D geometry of the node location in the universal lattice.

Good luck to you too and thanks.

Vladimir

Peter Jackson wrote on Mar. 8, 2011 @ 17:21 GMT

Vladimir

An excellent and interesting paper, which I thought I'd commented on earlier but seemingly not, and have just re-read. It confirmed the reasons why I 'bookmarked' it, as I very much agreed with most of your background sections, and there are some close parallels, but then also the odd major divergence, in your beautiful model. Well done and thanks for the interesting view. I'll try to catch up with your papers.

I hope you'll read mine if you haven't or perhaps we've already communicated there? I believe I may show you a few options to the directions you've gone which you may appreciate considering (if you haven't) as they seem to open the way to falsifiable solutions. You may also enjoy a short 'logical conclusions' paper with photographic evidence!

There are a number of consistent essays looking very strong and 'real', currently led by Edwin, which you seem to also be very close to (Ragaza, Parry, Spoljaric, Castel, Wittelman etc etc -see strings).

Thank you for your encouraging comments. As you will see I have now enjoyed re-reading your paper and and commented on it. In the days ahead I will study the papers you recommended. I find that the fqxi forums are not easy to navigate. Other online forums I am a member of have a 'Tracking' link to see all the forums any individual member has participated in listed by date, and with new contributions duly marked as such.

With best wishes, Vladimir

Peter Jackson wrote on Mar. 8, 2011 @ 17:31 GMT

Ooops, that was 'Mittleman!', plus Dan Bendict. I'd expect you may like them all. Do give me feedback on mine (if you haven't!) Too many essays and ageing brain cells!

Thank you for reading my essay. I have just done the same to yours. Your figures and your ideas are beautiful. We agree on some points, such as local realism, and I think we view particles in much the same manner. We also take seriously "Roger Penrose' call to 'start all over'." And we agree, I think, on the need for an 'ether' equivalent. And I think we also agree on Bell's Theorem: I too reject "probability as a real property of particles".

We are somewhat complementary in our approaches. If I interpret you correctly, you begin with electro-magnetics and 'derive' gravity therefrom. I begin with only a gravitational field and 'condense' locally real particles, including charged particles, which leads to electro-magnetics. Also, although our particles seem related, you place them on a lattice, whereas mine are embedded in a field. Thus there is overlap between our theories, but also points of divergence.

Peter remarked on 'aging brain cells', so I will remark on your association with Buckminster Fuller. As a teenager growing up in a backwater, all of the 'old people' I knew were 'simple' in that they never said anything that I had not either heard before or thought of before. So I concluded that your mind, like your muscles, degrades with age. But one day I saw Buckminster Fuller (age 76) on TV who said a number of things that I had never thought of! I then realized that one does not have to become simple and predictable with age.

Thanks for your kind words about my essay. I could only provide sample concepts of my Beautiful Universe (BU) theory in the fqxi essay, but yes gravity emerges as the twisting of the axes of the nodes as they rotate and influence adjoining node rotation rate and orientation. You probably understood my ideas better than I understood yours because I expressed them by word and figure while you mostly relied more on mathematical physics, not my forte.

As an inventor (as was Bucky of course) I tried to build in my mind a universal linkage that would function in such a way as to exhibit the experimental results we know from modern physics. Since I am happily outside academia and not accountable to professors, funding restrictions or other guides to keep my imagination in check, I could tweak and crank this system of universal gear-like nodes (maybe I should use another word than 'crank) simplifying it as much as possible, until, to the limits of my understanding, it seems to work. You seems to have done something similar, but using continuous functions instead of 'things', and of course as you say we may well be complementary in our approaches. I need to study your ideas more carefully, also those of others that Peter Jackson has recommended as being 'real'.

I wonder if it is possible to pool our ideas in some way - I was thinking that fqxi can host a dedicated online wiki-type collaboration whereby invited or otherwise selected like-minded people can hammer out the details of a theory - a participant skilled at computer simulation but who does not know much physics can give a valuable contribution. Others who know a lot of particle physics can suggest configurations of the model. You get the picture.

I enjoyed your comments ending with "I then realized that one does not have to become simple and predictable with age Keep thinking new thoughts, in honor of Bucky.". True, and will do , sir!

Best wishes from Vladimir

Guilford Robinson wrote on Mar. 10, 2011 @ 22:38 GMT

Tom

Imagine that two of your nodes are fixed about a pure discrete empty space particle. The nodes are of the Planck length size containing mass/energy and spin in place. The spin also drags and spins the empty space between the nodes. When an empty space spins about a point in its 3-space center, it can do so and maintain its continuity with the rest of space. While doing so, it can transmit its anguler/spin momentum to the adjacent pure discrete empty node space particles without the nodes being displaced. Would this provide an emperical explanation for your transmission lattice mechanism? You would have continuity and discreteness existing simultaneously. If you imagine that the Planck length space is another curled up dimension, then your lattice struct-ture would be pure 3-space that appears to transmit light momentum across empty space.

I read your interesting essay in which you also posit a universal particle. Thanks for your comment- you make a heuristically helpful suggestion that node spin drags the space around it thus affecting the state of neighboring nodes. But then one has to think of a sub-ether between the nodes that are themselves supposed to define the ether. It is mind-boggling however we think of it! As I wrote in section 1.3 of my in my earlier 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based, "This network of nodes creates space itself, so it is meaningless to speak of the shape of an individual node, neither of the material it is made of, or its behavior nor of any space between nodes." Be that as it may, the nodes may actually exist in a hidden universal set of 3 space dimensions. One can go on to speculate further...but to apply Popeye's expression to reductionism: "enufk is enufk!"

With best wishes from Vladimir

Guilford Robinson wrote on Mar. 10, 2011 @ 22:45 GMT

Vladimir

I'm sorry, I put Tom's name instead of youts, I was thinking of your article and didn't realize that I had written the wrong name until after I sent it.

I am proposing that FQXI TRY TO FIND THE BEST SOLUTIONS FOR JAPAN , we could discuss here on the thread of Vladimir,the ideas of several are better than one,do you know what are the results, datas , reals of this catrastrophe?,.It's a serious problem.The sciences are there for that, find solutions....

Thank you Steve perhaps fqxi may decide to create a special forum for its members to discuss world energy issues in view of what has happened. I feel this particular thread is not the right place to discuss it. Salam - Peace

Vladimir

Steve Dufourny replied on Mar. 18, 2011 @ 11:20 GMT

Indeed you are right. It's a good idea, we could extrapolate models, solutions,improvements...in all case the solutions exist.

it's important the cooling ...all countries must help quickly.It's essential.I don't understand how it's possible.

Congratulations on your dedication to the competition and your much deserved top 35 placing. I have a bugging question for you, which I've also posed to all the potential prize winners btw:

Q: Coulomb's Law of electrostatics was modelled by Maxwell by mechanical means after his mathematical deductions as an added verification (thanks for that bit of info Edwin), which I highly admire. To me, this gives his equation some substance. I have a problem with the laws of gravity though, especially the mathematical representation that "every object attracts every other object equally in all directions." The 'fabric' of spacetime model of gravity doesn't lend itself to explain the law of electrostatics. Coulomb's law denotes two types of matter, one 'charged' positive and the opposite type 'charged' negative. An Archimedes screw model for the graviton can explain -both- the gravity law and the electrostatic law, whilst the 'fabric' of spacetime can't. Doesn't this by definition make the helical screw model better than than anything else that has been suggested for the mechanism of the gravity force?? Otherwise the unification of all the forces is an impossiblity imo. Do you have an opinion on my analysis at all?

You ideas are interesting but for the gravity(not a archimede screw) and the electromagnetism....rotating spheres ....see the sense of rotations and the volumes of entanglement.....you shall see the mass .This quantization must be real.

In all case it's interesting your posts, Archimede was a big thinker indeed.

Thanks for your good wishes. I am very gratified that so many good and original thinkers were able to read my speculations..and of course they are nothing but speculations. If Nature is kind enough to act the way I have concluded it does (with dipolar building blocks capable of accounting for both gravity and electrostatics) I will be very happy - but it may well not! The pleasure of participation and learning here not ratings per se is what matters.

I am very interested in Maxwell's mechanical models and have been looking for source material but could only find the diagram I reprinted in my essay, and without explanation of what it means exactly. I will appreciate it if you can provide Edwin's reference.

Some weeks ago I had already read your idea about an Archimedes screw interpretation of the particle-wave duality. It is very clever the axis of the screw would be a vector and the helical structure the wave. I had commented about this in one of the discussions here but could not find my comment again! In it I said that - judging from the nice animation you made of the particle being driven by the screw - this may be a version of de Broglie's idea of a pilot wave associated with a point particle. In the figure illustrating electromagnetic propagation in my original 2005 Beautiful Universe paper on which my present fqxi paper is based, I have suggested how a circularly polarized wave would move with the axes of the nodes rotating in place to create a helical pattern - I feel there is no need for a separate 'mechanism' to create this motion as the screw does in your model. I will read your paper again.

Best wishes from Vladimir

Alan Lowey replied on Mar. 23, 2011 @ 13:18 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

I like the phrase you use "dipolar building blocks capable of accounting for both gravity and electrostatics" which is similar to my own visualisations, I think.

Btw the animation was a link from Wikipedia, but it shows the effect very well. There's a lot of potential with this idea and I've just realised that the original quandry with the orbit of Mercury can be explained by the 'inclination hypothesis' i.e. that gravity is stronger on the plane of rotation of a celestial body. I'm looking into it in detail right now..

Thanks and good luck with your conference. The past week in Japan was a major tragedy. Thank God my wife and family here are fine, but we had quite a shake in Tokyo too, not to mention the radiation scare. But it is nothing compared to those who suffered so much up North.

I was reading a bit about St. Anslem College it sounds a pleasant place to contemplate life and the universe!

Best wishes from Vladimir

Russell Jurgensen wrote on Mar. 26, 2011 @ 00:34 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

I'm glad to hear your family is safe, and we are thinking of the people who have lost so much.

Congratulations on placing well in the community ratings and best wishes for the final judging. I wanted to let you know I appreciated your comments on my essay and that you spotted a similarity in e/m induction forces driving atomic structure. In this essay contest there are many concepts of a smallest reality device, and I have enjoyed studying several of them. Yours gives a lot to think about. I wonder what would make up the spheres themselves and what produces them. Your suggestions for how they self-arrange is interesting. I can't help but expect the spheres themselves to move along with a particle but I can see how you describe the momentum transferring instead. It is an interesting concept for photons and their energy/momentum transfer characteristics. It seems like if we can truly characterize photons, then the explanation for other particles would fall out as well.

thank you for your kind remarks. The Japan earthquake and the response to it from people all over is yet one more reminder that we live on one planet that is full of challenges and that our fate is linked because of our common humanity, including the rich cultures and sciences we have created and share. Please excuse these disjointed ideas - it has been a strange couple of weeks here in Tokyo!

As some have noted the rating process can be rather arbitrary and I am lucky to have been considered in the final list. On the other hand there are so many essays that I am sure many gems have been overlooked because they have not been read, or perhaps as in your case, need a second reading to see its full merit.

I really should devote more time now to developing, analyzing and simulating in greater detail aspects of the model I have presented. GR becomes simple - momentum and a pattern of twisting node axes as measured along geodesics through a density field - like light rays bending in a gradient-index optical medium. On the other hand simple motion of matter needs acrobatic convolutions of the pattern made up of the node's rotation rate and axes orientation as they transfer their energy to their neighbors in the lattice. To answer your question about what the nodes are made of: as I told Steve the nodes are not themselves spheres or made up of matter - their angular momentum merely has the possibility to orient itself in any spherical angle. I agree with you and the other papers that insist that photons (whatever they are) are " the explanation for the other particles", and I may add "all the rest of physics besides!"

As I have pointed out in my essays, to make these notions work, physics has to be reverse-engineered and rebuilt on new first principles - call it an earthquake and reconstruction in physics :)

Best wishes from Vladimir

Ray Munroe replied on Mar. 29, 2011 @ 00:22 GMT

Dear Vladimir,

You said "As some have noted the rating process can be rather arbitrary and I am lucky to have been considered in the final list." There is no need to be so humble - your paper is that good.

I like your idea because it ties in with other interesting approaches. Originally, I thought of Gingras' magnetic spin ice, but upon further thought, I realized that the Black Hole end of a 4-qubit of strings (please see Philip Gibbs' and Lawrence Crowell's essays) should be a tetrahedron. This connection to both magnetic spin ice and strings (gravity) may produce an entropy-like gravity - perhaps something along the lines of Eric Verlinde's ideas. If this tetrahedron is spinning, then it may spin a twisted rope that may have both string and Archimedes' screw (Please see Alan Lowey's essay) properties.

I think that the beauty of an idea is its universality, and I see more and more connections between your ideas and others'.

Thanks for your comments. You are playing a wonderful role in this fqxi contest to read various papers, compare their ideas and introduce them to other authors and encouraging us in the process. One such idea is 'twisting' whether it is in a rope as you interestingly point out, or in my own theory, it may well hold a key ingredient to describe gravitational attraction. Alan's Archimedes' screw idea if I understand it correctly, applies to photons - a screw twists but how that is implemented in the general scheme of things has to be detailed. String theory is way beyond my understanding and interest. The tetrahedrons illustrated in my paper show the geometrical configuration of dipolar nodes in the lattice, but the tetrahedra do not spin as a unit. It is only the nodes of the surfaces of particles facing each other that spin in place, and in opposite directions This causes the systematic rope-like twisting of the nodes making up the intervening space. Obviously this idea needs to be examined more carefully and in detail.

Indeed I am having fun and hope you are too! With best wishes from Vladimir

Author Yuri Danoyan+ wrote on Mar. 30, 2011 @ 12:18 GMT

Gentlemens

I wonder why you did not notice or do not want to notice the radical view that an independent investigator.Remember this name: name,Friedwardt Winterberg

Thank you Sir for pointing out the very interesting work of Professor Winterberg of which I was not aware. Do you know him personally? He is one of many eminent and not so eminent physicists who were skeptical of Einstein's Relativity, not because Einstein was "wrong" but because there was an alternative and simpler formulation to describe the same effects: Implementing the Lorentz transformations in a universal ether is equivalent to Special Relativity. Assuming that space has a 'refractive' density potential - as Eddington suggested - see reference in fqxi my paper - is equivalent to General Relativity. I have incorporated these concepts in my 2005 Beautiful Universe theory on which my present fqxi paper is based.

Historically these simpler and physically more realistic explanations of Relativity were swept away by Einstein's success. It is only recently, when it is becoming clear that something is very wrong with the foundational principles of modern physics, that we must reverse-engineer Relativity and other theories to more basic concepts. In my papers I have outlined how this may be done, but I lack the technical and mathematical ability to formulate, simulate and test my physical intuitions.

Thank you for the links to Professor Winterberg's website and writings. I have now read a number of his texts and find his outlook refreshing. His suggestions of a "Planck Ether" made up of vortices of positive and negative elements making up everything in the universe without the need for extra dimensions has some interesting similarities with my theory, but also significant differences. I would be honored if he can read and comment on my papers.

One of the things I could not agree with is his interpretation of the results of Aspect's experiment (a variation of Bell's Theorem) as proving the existence of superluminal light velocities. He makes this claim because he considers the quantum wave as a real wave in the ether particles or nodes (as I do) and yet retains the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics (which I reject- the "probability" is just a natural outcome of the wave-form). This adds a layer of complication to his plan to revamp physics, even as he convincingly shows the necessity of reinterpreting General relativity in terms of his ether vortices.

In any case it is refreshing to read his work since it shows yet again that aspects of Einstein's theories need to be seriously re-examined and reinterpreted for physics to be whole.

From his brief words on the subject I could not understand Professor Winterberg's argument that Minkowski spacetime implies that everything is pre-determined - implying a theological conclusion about God and free will. One wants to read more on why he thinks so.

"From his brief words on the subject I could not understand Professor Winterberg's argument that Minkowski spacetime implies that everything is pre-determined - implying a theological conclusion about God and free will. One wants to read more on why he thinks so."

I would like reminding you quote from Winterberg article:

"5. Einstein - Parmenides and the Ontological Proof for the Non-Existence of God

The special theory of relativity understood by Einstein as a four-dimensional space-time continuum implies a kind of superdeterrninisrn with the future completely determined down to the smallest detail. This was the reason why Einstein believed time is an illusion and why Karl Popper told Einstein "You are Parmenides," the Greek philosopher (515-445) who believed that being is not becoming and time (becoming) an illusion. With everything exactly predetermined there can be no free will, not even a hypothetical God, and a God without free will is an ontological impossibility.

One therefore can say: If Einstein is right, then there can be no God. The opposite though, is not true; true rather is if God exists then Einstein must be wrong."

Dear Yuri- If I understand the Winterberg and Popper argument properly - Einstein's spacetime describe a deterministic causal universe (like a Laplacian clockwork) and therefore starting from a given situation the future is inevitable and predetermined? Yes that would imply God has no role there. But what about an intelligent being ..a mind ( yours, mine and the readers' for example) working from *within* this universe - surely this will introduce an element of freedom of choice at some level? In any case I think mixing up science and religion is not a good idea - a believer in God enters a world of faith beyond space and time.